RESEARCH STRATEGY for PAPER

ENG 102 Research Strategy Guide: The Third Paper (A Raisin in the Sun)

What Your Assignment Needs: 20% of your assignment’s grade will come from your integration of academic, peer-reviewed research into your essay.

What are academic sources? Academic, peer-reviewed sources are those that come from scholarly journals, books, or sources (these are, by definition, non-profit, and contain bibliographies and references to other scholarship).

How do I cite my work? You will use MLA style (click here).

Steps for finding and incorporating research

1.     Go to academic search engines and enter in keywords related to the assignment. This will probably be A Raisin in the Sun, but, given the findings, may also include other keywords from your topic, such as race, gender, and class.

2.     When you find an academic source, first skim it to see how relevant it is. You’ll want to read the introduction, the first sentence of each paragraph, and the conclusion to get a full sense of its relevance, but you may know rather quickly if it’s useful or not.

3.     When you find a useful source, begin to take notes. In general, and for the essay, you will need to know the major arguments, the main ways that source uses evidence, and several potential direct quotations potentially useful to incorporate into your essay.

4.     You will ultimately identify a direct quotation that contains an idea that supports or challenges or deepens one of the main claims you’re making in the paper.

Incorporating research material into your essay

1.     After your thesis statement in your introduction, you will alter the reader to your sources and how you use them in your essay.

2.     One method of incorporating the source is to create individual paragraphs that directly deal with your scholarship. You may also place the scholarship into one larger paragraph. If you do this, you will need a topic sentence claim that states the relationship between this research and the claim or claims you’re making in the paper. Remember, the research may support or challenge the claims you’re making. If it’s a challenge, you will need to defend your claims against the challenge of the research (this is called ‘counter-argumentation.’)

3.     Another method of incorporating research is to integrate the research ideas directly into the paragraphs supporting your thesis, which already contain the textual evidence you’re using to back up your thesis claims.

4.     No matter how or where you incorporate research, you will need to introduce the source to your reader by summarizing the main arguments of the piece, detailing how the source uses evidence, directly quoting from the source, and paraphrase and explain the significance of the quote.

Suggested Research Search Engines

You will find most of what you need to know on the LaGuardia Library Homepage.

Suggested Sources: Getting started

Drama for students. Volume 29 [electronic resource] : presenting analysis, context and criticism on commonly studied dramas / Sara Constantakis, project editor ; foreword by Carole L. Hamilton.

Title: Readings on A raisin in the sun / Lawrence Kappel, book editor.

Title: Understanding A raisin in the sun : a student casebook to issues, sources, and historical documents / Lynn Domina.

Title: Understanding blackness through performance [electronic resource] ; contemporary arts and the representation of identity / Edited by Anne Cremieux, Xavier Lemoine, Jean-Paul Rocchi.

Title: Staging the slums, slumming the stage [electronic resource] ; class, poverty, ethnicity, and sexuality in American theatre, 1890-1916 / J. Chris Westgate.

Author: Healey, Joseph F., 1945- author.

Title: Race, ethnicity, gender, & class : the sociology of group conflict and change / Joseph F. Healey, Christopher Newport University, Eileen O'Brien, Saint Leo University.

Title: Feminism is for everybody : passionate politics / bell hooks.

Title: Race, class, and gender in the United States : an integrated study / [edited by] Paula S. Rothenberg, Senior Fellow, The Murphy Institute, CUNY, with Kelly S. Mayhew, San Diego City College.

Author: Hooks, Bell.

Title: We real cool : Black men and masculinity / Bell Hooks.

Why I hate Abercrombie & Fitch [electronic resource] : essays on race and sexuality / Dwight A. McBride.

Take A Raisin in the Sun Books to Class Monday

We'll finish with it before we turn to The Hunger Games.

Twitter Assignment #8

1. Return to a Twitter conversation taking place about A Raisin in the Sun that you didn't start or participate in yet. Add your voice to the exchange by crafting a statement or question to the conversation.

2. Relate to the class what Topic you plan to choose for the third essay and why.

EXTRA CREDIT TWEET

3. What would Mac tell Walter, and/or what would Walter tell Mac?

Class Agenda 5.4

1. A word about building structure and thesis claims

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/america-2/

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if-we-must-die/

2. dramatic terms

3. the play

Dramatic Terms 5.4

1. Narrative Structure

 

 

2. plot

Plot is a literary term used to describe the events that make up a story or the main part of a story. These events relate to each other in a pattern or a sequence. The structure of a novel depends on the organization of events in the plot of the story.

Plot is known as the foundation of a novel or story which the characters and settings are built around. It is meant to organize information and events in a logical manner. When writing the plot of a piece of literature, the author has to be careful that it does not dominate the other parts of the story.


3. setting

setting, in literature, the location and time frame in which the action of a narrative takes place.

4. tragedy

Tragedy is kind of drama that presents a serious subject matter about human suffering and corresponding terrible events in a dignified manner.

Aristotle defines Tragedy in his famous work “Poetics” as:

“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.”

From the above definition, we can understand the objective of the Greek tragedies i.e. “…purification of such emotions” also called “catharsis”. Catharsis is a release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

English Tragedy

Shaped on the models of Seneca, the first English tragedy appeared in 1561, written by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. The play chose the story of a British king and his sufferings at the hand of his two disobedient sons as a subject matter. The importance of the play lies in the fact that it transformed the style of English drama from morality and mystery plays to the writing of tragedies in the Elizabethan era.

The Difference between Greek and English Tragedies

We notice the following differences between the tragedies by the Greek playwrights and those written by English playwrights:
1. Greek tragedies focused on a single theme and plot. English tragedies, on the other hand, have several story lines developing into plots and sub-plot.
2. Greek tragedies depicted “great” characters in their tragedies who were mortals but equal to gods and goddesses in their significance. Heroes of English tragedy may come from all walks of life.
3. Greek tragedies had a serious subject matter that was treated in a most dignified manner. English tragedies, on the other hand, tend to mix tragic with comic. Modern playwrights argue that such depiction is nearer to life as our life is a mixture of good and bad fortunes.
4. The performance of a Greek tragedy was a religious affair while English tragedies may intend to instruct or touch upon a religious or ethical issue but their main objective is to entertain.

 5. character/characterization

An author can use two approaches to deliver information about a character and build an image of it:
1. Direct or explicit characterization
This kind of characterization takes a direct approach towards building the character. It uses another character, narrator or the protagonist himself to tell the readers or audience about the subject.

2. Indirect or implicit characterization
This is a more subtle way of introducing the character to the audience. The audience has to deduce for themselves the characteristics of the character by observing his/her thought process, behavior, speech, way of talking, appearance, and way of communication with other characters and also by discerning the response of other characters.

Twitter Assignment #7

1. Which character are you following closest in Raisins in the Sun and why?
2. What writing skill do you most want to see us practice in class next month?

Reflection Note

Reflection on your writing process for essay assignment two. Answer the following questions in a brief letter to the professor. 1. Overall, are you confident that your essay meets the expectations of the assignment? Why or why not? 2. What is the most difficult part of the assignment for you? How are you overcoming it? 3. What is your strategy for doing excellent work for this assignment? 4.What were the two most valuable suggestions made about your paper in the peer review?